Detective Lieutenant Michael R. "Mike" Harrigan[1] was an officer with the Los Angeles Police Department and head of a small team at the Alvarado Precinct during the gang wars of 1997. His investigation of severe gang violence led him to cross paths with that of a Predator in the city hunting the same gangs for sport.

Harrigan was often combative with superiors, who he viewed as obstructive and unrealistic, although he seemed to hold more respect for Captain Pilgrim, his immediate superior at the station. In particular Harrigan came into conflict with Peter Keyes and his secret government team attempting to trap the Predator.

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Harrigan grew up on the streets of Los Angeles with his close friend Danny Archuleta, and the two eventually joined the police force and went through training together.[2] At one point, he was also good friends with fellow officer Phil Heinemann, but when the latter was promoted their friendship fractured as a result of their conflicting ideals and methods.[3]

During his fifteen years of service with the LAPD, Harrigan was credited with destroying eleven police patrol cars in the line of duty, as well as a city bus and a streetsweeper in undisclosed incidents. He also received ten commendations for valor in the line of duty and held the best felony arrest record in the history of the LAPD.[1] Harrigan's dedication to his duty cost him a marriage and several long-term relationships.[4]

When two motorcycle officers were gunned down after inadvertently stumbling into a drug deal, Harrigan and his team rushed to the scene. Harrigan single-handedly assaulted the Colombian Scorpions, pursuing them into their stronghold and sending their leader, El Scorpio, plummeting from the building's roof. However, the rest of the gang members had already been slaughtered by the City Hunter, whom the police officers mistakenly believed to be some previously unknown hitman, possibly working for the Colombian's rivals, the Jamaican Voodoo Posse.

Following the shootout, Harrigan was warned by his superiors, Deputy Chief Heinemann and Captain Pilgrim to stay out of the investigation into the drug gangs, which was being taken over by Special Agent Peter Keyes of the DEA. Harrigan was also introduced to his cocky new partner, Jerry "The Lone Ranger" Lambert.

Harrigan's team later rushed to the scene when drug kingpin Ramon Vega was executed by several Jamaicans, who were themselves then killed inside Vega's apartment by the City Hunter. However, they were quickly removed from the crime scene by Keyes and his people. Harrigan formulated a plan to sneak back into the apartment later that night once Keyes' team had left, but Archuleta arrived first and became the City Hunter's next victim.

Now determined to find and kill Archuleta's murderer at any cost, Harrigan met with the leader of the Jamaican gang, King Willie, hoping to find information on the mysterious killer stalking the city. Moments after their unproductive meeting, King Willie also fell victim to the City Hunter. Harrigan next found himself being stalked by the Predator at the cemetery where Archuleta had been buried, the hunter leaving a piece of Archuleta's necklace hanging in a tree for Harrigan to find.

When evidence began to point to the killer being based in the city's slaughterhouse district, Harrigan asked Detectives Cantrell and Lambert to meet him so that they could investigate; upon reaching the meeting place, a Metro station, Harrigan discovered to his horror that the killer had struck again, killing several civilians and butchering Lambert. However, Cantrell was spared, which Harrigan deduced was due to her being pregnant. The Lieutenant took off in pursuit of the Predator, but was apprehended and captured by Keyes' men.

From Keyes, Harrigan finally learnt what he was dealing with — an extraterrestrial that killed for sport and honor and possessed incredible technology. Far from being in the DEA, Keyes was actually the head of the OWLF, a secret government taskforce seeking to capture the creature for study, and had set a trap for it inside the slaughterhouse where it was known to feed. Despite Harrigan's warnings, Keyes's capture team was slaughtered, forcing Harrigan to escape from custody and face the Predator himself. While initially gaining the upper hand, the City Hunter soon rallied itself and almost killed Harrigan, before Keyes intervened, at the cost of his own life, giving the detective a chance to escape. The battle moved up to the building's roof, through Ruth Albright's adjacent apartment, and finally into the tunnels beneath the city, where Harrigan discovered the City Hunter's Mother Ship.

On board the vessel, Harrigan discovered a trophy cabinet containing the skulls of the myriad creatures the Predator had stalked and killed, including a XenomorphWarrior. Inside the ship, Harrigan and the City Hunter faced off in a final hand-to-hand duel, with Harrigan ultimately killing the City Hunter with its own Smart-Disc. With the hunter defeated, Harrigan suddenly found himself surrounded by several more of the creatures. Exhausted, he resigned himself to his fate. However, the leader of the Predators, Greyback, honored Harrigan with an antique flintlock pistol and, gathering their fallen comrade's body, the Predators left aboard their ship as Harrigan fled from the exhaust.

After reaching the surface, Harrigan was confronted by Keyes' senior officer, Garber, furious that the detective had killed the creature they sought to capture. Looking at the flintlock in his hand, Harrigan assured him he would get another chance.

According to Harrigan's police file, he is violence prone, has an obsessive/compulsive personality and a history of employing excessive physical force.[1] Harrigan is brash and short-tempered, often openly aggressive and with a tendency to disobey orders that he sees as restrictive or counter-productive, characteristics that lead to him butting heads with his superiors on a regular basis. He also had a particularly conflictive relationship with street journalist Tony Pope. However, his policing methods, though unorthodox and extreme, are very effective and he always gets the job done, a fact that exonerates him in the eyes of his immediate superior Captain Pilgrim.

Despite his occasionally fraught relationship with his superiors, Harrigan is fiercely loyal to his fellow officers, particularly his partner and close friend Danny Archuleta; Archuleta's death devastated Harrigan in particular. It is also noted that Harrigan appears to have acrophobia (an intense fear of heights), which he is forced to overcome during his pursuit of the Predator.

Harrigan carried a brushed chrome .357 Magnum Desert Eagle fitted with a laser sight as his primary sidearm, but kept a variety of pistols and revolvers in the trunk of his patrol car. He also frequently armed himself with cut-down Benelli M1 Super 90 semi-automatic shotgun, fitted with a laser sight, when he required greater firepower at close quarters. Before his final confrontation with the City Hunter, realizing he would need even heavier weaponry, Harrigan armed himself with a CAR-15 Carbine fitted with an M203 grenade launcher.

Harrigan was shown to be a resourceful man when it came to combat. During a large shootout with El Scorpio and his men, Harrigan made a makeshift armored car out of his patrol vehicle by covering the windows with bulletproof vests, using it to assist in the rescue of two wounded motorcycle officers. Later, he adapted quickly to using the Predator's Smart-Disc, ultimately using the weapon to kill the City Hunter. Aside from weapons, Harrigan wore heavy body armor that was strong enough to protect him from the City Hunter's Gauntlet Plasma Bolt.

Originally, Harrigan actor Danny Glover was due to reprise his role in Predators, but the actor declined the part for personal reasons. The role was eventually rewritten as Ronald Noland.[5]

Harrigan was the first human to use a Yautja weapon, when he claims the City Hunter's Smart-Disc near the end of the film and uses it in his final confrontation with the creature.

At one point when talking to the Predator, Harrigan begins to quote Dutch's line, "You're one ugly motherfucker," from Predator. However, the City Hunter grabs his throat before he can finish and says the rest of the line for him. This would imply that the City Hunter had either overheard the word before and simply predicted what Harrigan was going to say, or had somehow gained knowledge of the Jungle Hunter's exploits in Val Verde. The novelization of the film explains it is the latter; the Jungle Hunter's Bio-Mask recorded everything that happened in Val Verde and relayed it to its ship, which then returned home with this information after the creature's death.[6] (While the Jungle Hunter was not actually wearing its Mask at the time Dutch says the line, it was lying on the ground nearby, and could still potentially have been recording.)

In the novelization of the film, it is Greyback who kills the City Hunter, not Harrigan — Harrigan merely severely wounds the City Hunter with the Smart-Disc, at which point Greyback and the others arrive. The City Hunter then willingly allows Greyback to behead it.[7]